


Nostalgic for a time we never knew

by sayfilmagain



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Marauders Era (Harry Potter), Marauders Friendship (Harry Potter), Multi, Wizarding Politics (Harry Potter), boarding school shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-20
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-18 22:42:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28874766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sayfilmagain/pseuds/sayfilmagain
Summary: A few vignettes from the Marauder's schooldays, exploring their friendships, romances and comings of age.---“I touched a breast tonight, gents!” Remus cut in, triumphantly, his hands up in the air, his feet planted on either side of Sirius’ legs on the bed. He looked giddy. Peter came out of the bathroom with his robes still askew, James literally sprang to his feet.“You did what?”
Relationships: James Potter/Lily Evans Potter, Remus Lupin/Original Female Character(s), Sirius Black/Original Female Character(s), Sirius Black/Remus Lupin
Comments: 12
Kudos: 21





	1. Sorting Hat Politics

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know we're all over Harry Potter now in a big way. But in these difficult and unprecedented times, I just want to return to the nostalgic Hogwarts of my childhood in its best form: Marauders Era fanfiction. This is a sort of ode to the beauty of the likes of the Shoebox Project. A Marauders Era and Marauders that better represent us as a fan community than the canon characters!  
> I haven't read anything Rowling published after the Deathly Hallows. I've forgotten much of what I read. These are the Marauders as imagined by fandom much more than as they appear in the books. I've taken plenty of liberties, but I hope you'll like them!

At the outset of the 1970’s, muggle England was in the throes of a sexual revolution. Radical, liberal thinking was sweeping through the youth of the working classes as it never had before. The civil rights movement in America, rock and roll music, it was all conspiring to force young Brits to dream beyond their often-narrow worlds. The contrast with wizarding England at that time couldn’t have been more blatant. 

Albus Dumbledore had turned 90 in the summer of ’71. He had lived through that brief, hopeful period in the ‘20s, when it seemed as if the world was going to come to its senses. He remembered being overwhelmed by the small triumphs as they’d piled up, witches being allowed onto the Wizengamot, the end of a Goblin Revolution, the first half-blood Minister for Magic, breaking the pureblood oligarchy that had ruled for as long as there had been a Ministry. Suddenly, the doors of the Ministry had opened to muggleborns and mixed marriages became more commonplace. It had seemed as if family ties and increasing equality would help even some of the staunch conservatives to begin their change in views. Dumbledore and his peers had hoped that the progress would continue.

But that hope had collapsed too soon and with disappointing ease. Dumbledore knew that when historians would look back on this decade of wizarding history, it would be defined by Voldemort. But in so many ways, Riddle was just the excuse the poisonous tendency in wizarding England had been seeking. Even before Voldemort had had much of a following, when it had become evident that it was no longer socially acceptable to spit in the faces of muggleborn wizards, the pureblood families of England had turned to other, even older prejudices. 

Dumbledore remembered the murder of O’Shea, an Irish Republican and revivalist whom the wizarding world at large had scorned for tying his loyalties to Muggle politics as vociferously as he had. In fact, any sign of patriotism from Irish witches and wizards had been met with outright violence and the liberal community had been too busy patting itself on the back for reforming the Ministry to notice. Druidic practices that had been quietly kept alive for generations were in danger of being lost forever in a fever of oppression and it had resulted in Irish witches and wizards almost unanimously deciding to, like their muggle counterparts, cut ties with Britain and the Ministry. 

The tendency for violence and supremacy had always been there, in a wizarding community that only seemed to grow more divided over time. Voldemort had taken advantage of the bitterness of purebloods who saw their influence and power waning and were ready to murder to have it back. He didn’t need to do much to coax them into committing atrocities. 

Which was why, when a small and sleepy looking boy called Sirius Black sat down on the three legged stool in the Great Hall, the first of his peers, and the hat placed on his head didn’t  _ immediately  _ shout ‘Slytherin!’, Slughorn and Stoutwell were already exchanging glances. The silence stretched, and finally, after a year of sleep, the hat roared, “Gryffindor!”

The table under red and gold banners exploded into cheers for their first inductee, but among the seventh and sixth years at every table there were raised eyebrows and a susurration of whispers. When Minerva took the hat from the boy’s head, her eyes met Albus’ and he saw his grim smile mirrored there. An incensed letter would probably reach them soon. The child stood from the stool triumphantly, his little chin held high, though the fear was plain in his eyes. Albus was surprised. Where had this dissenting seed come from, to possess this child to turn against his parents at such a tender age? How did he know that there was an alternative to what he’d been fed since the cradle?

Lupin was absolutely no surprise, Albus had had him pegged for Gryffindor from the moment he had visited the poor boy at home in Yorkshire, in June. But a litany of pureblood names got sorted next, and not a single addition to Slytherin. 

Hestia Lusk went to Hufflepuff.

Abelard Marlebone to Ravenclaw.

Branson Mewes followed him.

Nigella Needleston to Hufflepuff.

Pettigrew, Potter and Prewett, in quick succession, all to Gryffindor.

And then Gerard Rothschild to Hufflepuff.

In fact, they’d reached Snape before Slytherin got another addition. 


	2. How Sirius came to know what he knew

Sirius had been a beautiful, happy child, his mother’s darling — right up until the point when he had learned to speak. His nanny had brought him into the parlour one evening after his parents had had their dinner, as was their custom, and his father had watched, distantly amused, as the child drove his wife to distraction with stupid question after stupid question. It had only taken Sirius ten minutes to wear her down. She asked that he be taken away and had had to lie down on a divan with an arm over her face to recover.

Sirius was a curious, willful boy. If his mother had had more patience, if his nannies and governesses had been less distant and blank, if his father had ever paid him any heed as a child, he might have been indoctrinated. His family failed to answer his questions at every turn, and he’d had to seek his knowledge elsewhere. He was always slipping through their fingers, disappearing from the back garden when Regulus scraped his knee and the nanny wasn’t paying attention to him, sneaking away from the dinner table when his parents were too busy arguing to notice, locking his cousin Bellatrix in the bathroom when she was meant to be watching him.

By the time the summer before Hogwarts came around, Sirius was completely undeterred by his mother’s frustrated corporeal punishments and hysterics. He did exactly what he wanted and faced the consequences. He snuck out of number 12 every chance he got to play with his muggle friends who lived in the estate across the busy high road on the other side of the garden wall. He even had a battered muggle bicycle hidden away by the state school parking lot; he had traded it for a carton of cigarettes he’d stolen while a delivery driver had been unloading at the shop. 

Sirius roamed about with other boys his age, stealing pick’n’mix, shouting insults at the old drunks down at the local who came outside bleary-eyed in the afternoon to walk to the chipper. They kicked over sandcastles in the playground and hoarded cigarettes. One summer night in the underpass, a 14-year-old boy called Tarek showed him a dirty magazine and told him about blowjobs. His muggle friends answered all sorts of questions without Sirius even having to ask them.

He knew all about how the world worked, and when he went home to a mother who was maddened by her inability to control him, he bore her brutality smug in the knowledge that he knew more than her. He’d probably had more of a muggle childhood than many half-bloods.

“My friend Liam told me that The Who is basically the best band in the world,” he had been saying to his compartment on the journey to Hogwarts, “and he would know because he’s  _ seventeen _ .”

Of course, the young witches and wizards he’d been sitting with had never heard of The Who, but they were nevertheless impressed that Sirius counted a seventeen-year-old among his friends. 


	3. First Year

Dumbledore, for all his insistence that Remus attend Hogwarts, had spent much of August doubting his decision behind closed doors. Surely, Minerva had said to him the only time he had confided in her, surely he had so many things to be worried about that this was but a trifle. She was able to make any quiet concern look like theatrics by contrast, and Dumbledore found her competence soothing, but still, he had worried. And to assuage his worries, he had kept his eye on the young lads in Gryffindor's dorm number 2. What he observed was the budding of exactly the type of friendship he had hoped Remus would be able to form while at school.

The Marauders came together quite naturally. James, an only child who’d grown up in a small community, suddenly had endless playmates and no mother to disappoint. He wanted to make friends with everyone, but also to get away with as much mischief as humanly possible. Sirius latched onto him immediately, the voice in his ear always saying, “What? You’re scared of McGonagall? What is she going to do to us?” The teachers at Hogwarts inspired more respect in Sirius than his mother, but they absolutely couldn’t frighten him. Peter idolized them both. He was ready to do absolutely anything they asked him to, and James and Sirius competed to be the most daring, the most outrageous, the one Peter declared was the tops. 

Remus ought to have been the odd one out. Although he was already the tallest, broadest boy in their form, his illness made him seem fragile. He was a little too thin, slightly withdrawn, a mite softspoken. But he was also arguably the best liar Hogwarts had ever seen. He said things that weren’t true with perfect conviction, his blameless face, large eyes and unwavering certainty inspired total trust. At eleven, it was Remus who devised the lie that would protect him for the duration of his time at Hogwarts. He spent a night or two of every week in the hospital wing with the young Madam Pomfrey, and the rumours spread that he had a disorder of the blood and needed regular transfusion potions, therefore, masking the cycle of the moon that had so much sway over him. Dumbledore had been delighted with him when he’d quietly piped up with his idea. 

His ability to fool students and teachers alike made him an invaluable asset to the Marauders. Remus, after a childhood of being constantly watched over by concerned parents, was delighted to have the freedom to get in a little trouble. 

From the head table one bright June morning when light streamed down in abundance, Dumbledore observed them sitting down to breakfast together. Halfway through the meal, he glanced over to see them catapulting jam across the table at each other and incensing fifth years in the process. A prefect went over to give out to them and Dumbledore watched Remus's face flicker between a look of wide-eyed innocence—apologising for his friends' behaviour, solemnly promising that he would try to keep them from misbehaving in future—to one of sly humour whenever the prefect turned away from him. When the prefect finally left them, James Potter slung his arm around Remus's neck in a friendly way and they stayed that way for the rest of the meal. 

It was natural for the first years to be giddy in the last weeks of June when they looked forward to reuniting with mothers most of them had spent many nights crying for. Remus had been in the hospital wing with the young Madam Pomfrey for two nights as a part of his ruse and Dumbledore had wandered down to watch him sleep.

"He told me tonight that even if he's not allowed to come back in September, he's glad he was allowed at least one year," Poppy had said to him when they'd met in the hall.

Watching those four boys laugh as they tumbled out of the Great Hall together that morning, Dumbledore couldn't help but agree. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, are we ready to move on to some shenanigans in the next chapter?


	4. Remus touched a breast

Remus’ caution and reserve were a part of the lie that kept him safe, but once his friends had learned his secret, they started to know him unreservedly. Their Remus was a different person to the one everyone else knew. Sure he was still biting and acerbic, a little secretive—but he was blunt with them, cocky with them, rude with them. One of their last nights of term in second year, he burst into the dormitory they shared, looking flushed and mightily proud of himself.

“Bow down, wankers!” he crowed, hopping onto Sirius’ bed and kicking his transfiguration book right out of his hands.

“Hey!” Sirius punched him in the calf, viciously, “Bloody hell, Remus! Aren’t you the one always telling me it won’t kill me to pick up a book? Look at this, you great, staggering arsehole! You’ve literally—”

“I touched a breast tonight, gents!” Remus cut in, triumphantly, his hands up in the air, his feet planted on either side of Sirius’ legs on the bed. He looked giddy. Peter came out of the bathroom with his robes still askew, James literally sprang to his feet.

“You did what?”

“I touched a  _ breast _ ,” Remus said, he made a little grabbing gesture with his left hand, “I  _ touched _ a breast! A  _ fourteen-year-old _ breast!”

“And then you got your brains slapped right out of your head,” Sirius said, shoving Remus right off his bed.

Remus didn’t even acknowledge him. He looked just as pleased from his place on the floor as he had since he’d stepped into the room.

“Lads,” he said, a little breathlessly, “Lads, it’s even better than I imagined. It was so… It was so soft, sort of squashy, but sort of firm once you’ve got your hand around it—”

“Remus, Remus!” James said very seriously, snapping his fingers in front of his friend’s dreamy eyes after he’d exchanged a disbelieving look with Peter, “ _ Whose breast? _ ”

Sirius rolled onto his side on the bed, propping his head up on his hand, finally paying attention. Remus was leaning back against the side of his bed, staring dreamily over the heads of Peter and James who had settled down on the floor facing him.

“Sabrina Davies,” he breathed, and Peter let out a low, appreciative whistle.

“Merlin, if I was going to pick a breast, that would almost certainly be at the top of my list.”

“Well,” Sirius said, impatiently, “did she slap you?”

“No,” Remus said, smiling to himself, “she kissed me.”

“Well I’ll be buggered,” James said, clapping Remus on the knee, “I honestly thought I’d be the first of us to get kissed. Well done Remus!” He ducked a pillow Sirius had launched at him.

“Tell us! Tell us!” Peter said, even as Sirius rolled his eyes.

“I actually kissed her a few days ago,” Remus said, and his cheeks flushed even more as they all gaped at him.

“You kissed a girl and you didn’t  _ tell  _ us?”

“Moony, that is  _ not _ on!”

“That must be against some brotherly code of conduct, mate.”

“I didn’t want you tossers saying something stupid to her!” Remus said hotly and Sirius reached down from his bed to wrap his hands around Remus’ neck and shake him.

“Will You Just Tell Us! Tell us the bloody story before Peter’s head explodes all over the place! Wanker!”

“Alright! Alright!” Remus said, fighting Sirius’ hands off. 

“Well, she’s friends with Madeleine Abbot, isn’t she? And Madeleine and me were studying for McGonagall’s exam together on Monday night in the library because none of you useless gits are capable of taking legible notes, and she told me that Sabrina told  _ her _ that she thought I might be quite fanciable if I got a haircut.”

“Oh  _ that’s  _ why—”

“Yes,” Remus continued, “ _ That’s _ why I got Sirius to cut my hair then. And well, I gave Madeleine a note the next day, to give to Sabrina, to tell her—” Remus flushed again, the colour reaching right to his collarbones.

“Moony, what did you write?” James asked, awed that his friend had done all this without even consulting them. 

“I just wrote, ‘I heard you wanted me to get a haircut, well your wish is my command.’” Remus mumbled. Sirius laughed, but Peter just whistled through his teeth again.

“That takes backbone, mate,” James assured Remus.

“I figured, you know, I couldn’t just ask her if she fancied me, and I couldn’t let her think it was a coincidence. So she came up to me Wednesday morning in the Entrance Hall before breakfast, and she said she thought my note was quite funny and she quite liked my hair—”

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Sirius cut in.

“Yeah thanks, Sirius. So I said that I thought she was the most beautiful girl in her year and I, well, I kissed her.”

“On the mouth?”

“No, Peter, on the arse. Of course on the mouth,” Remus said, rolling his eyes.

“What was it like?” James asked, and they could all practically see images of Lily Evans’ lips projecting from his eyes.

Remus screwed up his nose and shrugged, “It wasn’t anything, really. Our lips just pressed together for a moment, and then she giggled and ran off to breakfast and I felt a bit stupid. But then, yesterday Madeleine told me before transfiguration that Sabrina definitely fancies me, so I went to find her in the evening because, you know, she sings in the choir, so I knew she’d go to Flitwick’s classroom after dinner, and I just told her to meet me in the Entrance Hall after dinner tonight and she said okay.”

“Merlin, Remus!”

“So she met me and we went outside and we held hands a little bit and she told me about how her little sister is coming to school next year and stuff and then I told her I wanted to kiss her again and she said okay and it was…” Remus trailed off, that faraway look coming into his eyes again, his smile returning. No one prompted him this time, they just leaned a little closer, waited.

“Oh lads, it was the best thing I ever did in my whole life. I did exactly what it says in  _ The Guide _ , and it worked.”

Remus’ History of Magic textbook had been bought second hand, and in the middle of the Chapter about the Roman Inquisition, on a page at the end of a section that the printer had left blank, a previous owner had written  _ The Guide to Making Any Girl’s Knees Melt _ in a distinctly feminine hand.

“What did you do? Tell us exactly,” James demanded, and Remus’ eyes snapped to him. He smiled the most self-satisfied smile any of them had ever seen on his face, he shrugged.

“I put my hand on the back of her neck, and kind of dipped her a tiny bit, like it says, and then I opened my mouth a little bit and sort of touched her lip with my tongue.” Sirius could feel the colour rising to his face and Peter shook his head, his expression stunned.

“Did she like it?” James asked.

“Yes,” Remus said with utter certainty, “She went completely soft, and she let me put my tongue  _ right in her mouth _ , it was amazing. Oh, and then, I kissed her neck, like it says and she sort of moaned and pulled me closer. It was  _ brilliant _ ! And then, I thought it was pretty cheeky of me, but I sort of put my hand on her chest and slid it into her robes—”

“You touched her  _ bare _ breast!” Peter positively squeaked, and Remus threw his head back and laughed, a wild and breathless laugh.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” he said, giddy again, “I touched a  _ breast _ .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remus is my favourite. He grows up into a sad hottie. Fight me.


End file.
